Protests are nothing new at Monsanto’s shareholder meetings, as I learned Tuesday when I attended the company’s 14th annual meeting.

But in 14 degree weather, protesters braced for bitter cold with hats, hand warmers and layers of winter gear. (My eyes were tearing in the cold, and when I finally went inside, the drops had frozen on my eyelashes.) By the end of the day, several protesters also had been taken into custody for staging “acts of civil disobedience,” while two shareholder proposals related to GMO food were voted down inside Monsanto’s Creve Coeur headquarters.

But first, a recap of the protests.

“Are we eating fishy food? We have the right to know!” chanted protesters led by organizer and shareholder Adam Eidinger, as Creve Coeur police officers watched from a few yards away.

Malini Chatterji, a teacher, brought her sons, ages 7 and 12. “As it is, people’s food habits have deteriorated,” she said. “The more you let companies cook for you the more you are prey. You may not get sick tomorrow, but it’s slow and insidious.”

As the meeting got under way, at least six people were taken into police custody and several cars were towed when protesters “tried to blockade the entrance and exit” to Monsanto’s campus on Lindbergh Boulevard with their cars as part of a “lock in,” said protester Scott Ritter.

Inside, I thawed out while Monsanto shareholders seemed unfazed by the protesters, and routine business went forward. Shareholders approved Monsanto’s executive compensation and the appointment of Deloitte & Touche LLP as the company’s independent registered accounting firm for fiscal 2014.

Four directors, all of whom previously served on the board, also were approved to serve until 2015, including: Greg Boyce, chairman and CEO of Peabody Energy Corp.; Laura Ipsen, corporate vice president, worldwide public sector at Microsoft Corp.; George Poste, CEO of Health Technology Networks; and William Parfet, chairman, CEO and president of MPI Research Inc.

But Chairman and CEO Hugh Grant acknowledged Monsanto’s responsibility to engage in the food labeling debate. “We simply haven’t engaged enough. I apologize myself,” he said. “It’s something we know we need to work harder on.”

Grant said although Monsanto strongly supports voluntary food labeling, mandatory labeling is “unacceptable.” Biotech products have been demonstrated to be safe, he said during a question and answer period, and to lump it with salt and calories as harmful is “patently unfair and misleading from a scientific point of view.”

In the end, both shareholder proposals failed. The proposal to support GMO labeling captured 4.16 percent of the vote and the proposal to address the financial risk associated with GMO contamination garnered 6.51 percent of the vote.

Dave Murphy, executive director of Food Democracy Now, seemed disappointed with the numbers. “Shareholders are fundamentally living in a bubble,” Murphy said. “We’re not giving up.”